A survey and critical analysis of tools for learning programming

Systems and methodologies have been developed to improve the learning and practice of programming. We examine the kinds of support tools that have been developed to date, and we discuss their role in meeting the needs of beginning students. We begin with a literature review to summarize the actual difficulties involved in learning the tasks of program development. A comprehensive survey of environments developed to support the learning of problem solving and programming follows, covering programming environments, debugging aids, intelligent tutoring systems, and intelligent programming environments. A careful analysis of these systems uncovers the limitations that have prevented them from accomplishing their goals.